


The Spectre of Giving

by intodusk



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Santa Clause (Movies)
Genre: Only loosely related to the movies, Pre-Canon, somewhat AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28462365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intodusk/pseuds/intodusk
Summary: Taylor just wants a cell phone for Christmas. Is that really too much to ask for?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	The Spectre of Giving

**Author's Note:**

> My Give-A-Fic piece for RecursiveMontage on the Cauldron discord!
> 
> Prompt: Worm/The Santa Clause crossover

"If I guess what you got me, can I have it right now?"

Her dad's smile tightened. He looked older when he was under stress, in the lines of his jowls and the crease in his forehead, like the skin of a plum as it becomes a prune. He'd been pruning a lot lately. "If you go to sleep now, it'll be Christmas morning before you know it. You can open your present then."

Any other time, Taylor would have nodded eagerly, settled in beneath her quilt and started snoozing as soon as possible. Tonight was different, though; she had to press the issue. "Is it… a Gamecube?”

He was sat at the edge of the bed, so she could feel through the mattress when he shifted his weight away. Large work-worn hands removed his glasses and started cleaning them with the hem of his faded t-shirt. “Sweetheart, those are expensive, and you know money’s been tight.”

"Then it's of those eyeshadow things, or some other grown-up makeup!"

He replaced his glasses in time to send her a disbelieving look. “Makeup? You’re not even a teenager yet.”

She made direct eye contact, willing him to say yes this time. “A cell phone.”

The crease in his forehead deepened. “What’s going on here, honey? What’s this all about?”

Taylor tried to stare him down, but the effort was futile. She looked away, watching the snow fall past her window, letting her head plop back onto the pillow. “Everyone else at school has one already. I don’t wanna get left behind.”

“Everyone else?” he said with a doubtful inflection.

She tried to shrug but only succeeded in tugging the quilt up so it covered half her face and muffled her words. “Emma does, at least. And so do all her other friends.”

He sighed, though she almost didn’t hear it over the hushing whistle of the wind outside. When he spoke again, his voice was just as low. “This year has been… difficult, without your mother. And I know you’re worried about losing your best friend. But we’re barely getting by as is, and if I took any more extra shifts at the docks there wouldn’t be much time for us to spend together. You don’t want that, do you?”

A long, awkward quiet fell between them. She could feel his eyes on her, even if she wouldn’t meet them, and some sour, hurting side of her wanted to say yes. It didn’t win, but she didn’t say no, either.

If her silence upset him, he didn’t let it show. Instead, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. His stubbly bristles tickled her skin, and she noticed as he pulled away that there were some new grey hairs among the darker ones, like bits of slush on damp soil. “Goodnight, Taylor. We’ll open your present in the morning. Over tea, if you want.” He paused a moment, just standing there, then flicked the lightswitch and slipped out of her room.

With the ceiling light off, the pale glow from the yard was her only light in the gloom. The moon’s gleaming; filtered through gaps in the heavy clouds, softened by the building carpet of snow, spilling through her window onto the floorboards, feeble and dim. Falling snowflakes played with what was left, drew subtle motes of light and shadow on the ground, traced a dancing path from her bed to the sill.

Before the diagnosis, Dad and his side of the family had handled Thanksgivings, so Mom had been in charge of Christmas. She hadn’t been pushy about traditions, but she hadn’t avoided most of them either. What they did for the holiday any given year was determined by what they wanted to do, no more and no less. One year, nobody had felt like putting up a Christmas tree, so they hadn’t. The next year they’d had a tree but opted for Chinese takeout instead of anything home-cooked. They’d watched Mission: Impossible as often as It’s a Wonderful Life.

The one thing Mom had never, ever included was Santa Claus. Not once had she let Taylor send a letter to the North Pole, baked cookies to leave out on the eve, or even played songs that referred to him. Taylor had only found out he existed when she started going to school, and asking Mom about him had just gotten her a long talking to about consumerism and commodification and other difficult words. Mom had still given her presents and love, though, and for most of her life, that had been enough.

But Mom was gone now, and Taylor’s bond with her only friend was at stake.

“Santa?” she whispered, squinting out into the pallid, frigid night. “Can you hear me?”

Her only answer was the wind.

“I know I haven’t written, and you probably haven’t put me on your list, but…” She hesitated, looking to the door, listening for any indication that Dad was still up.

Nothing.

Back to the window. The glow was brighter now, making her wince as her eyes adjusted. The moon had passed through a gap in the clouds, making the snow seem whiter. The sky looked murky and mottled by contrast. Taylor licked her lips, strengthened her resolve, and spoke.

“Can you give me a cell phone?”

_ cla-clunk _

Taylor jolted out of bed, eyes wide and glued to the floor, then got down on her hands and knees so she could put her ear up against the boards. She waited, and waited and waited, and just as she started to wonder if she’d been imagining things, it came again.

_ cla-clunk-clunk _

The sound was metallic, oddly hollow, and unlike anything she’d been expecting. She sat up, brow furrowed, and decided to check it out. A moment’s scrabbling at her bedside table found her glasses. A coat went over her flannel pajamas and old slippers warmed her feet. She opened her door slowly so it wouldn’t creak.

A narrow hallway stretched between her room and Dad’s, and the landing was on his side. As she crept closer to his closed door, careful to avoid any squeaky boards, muffled snoring reached her ears. Her shoulders relaxed; once Dad had conked out, he could sleep through an earthquake. She turned and started down the stairs.

Peeking into the living room from the front hall, she found very little out of the ordinary. The curtains were still closed, barely letting in enough light to see by. A used-up roll of wrapping paper and a pair of scissors had been left out on the coffee table. No one seemed to be in the room, nor did she catch anyone in the reflection of the old CRT TV. There wasn’t much for someone to hide behind, anyways. They didn’t have a chimney, and their little plastic tree and all its ornaments were still boxed up in-

_ Cla-clunk cla-clunk _

-the basement. They didn’t have a chimney, and the sound was coming from the basement.

If Taylor’s heart hadn’t been racing before, it sure was now. She half-walked, half-ran to the kitchen and pressed up against the door by the fridge.

_ CLA-CLUNK CLUNK _

This time she recognized the sound. It was coming from the old coal chute, the one they’d boarded up ages ago. It was barely two feet wide by two feet tall, far too small for someone to crawl through. She was starting to suspect an unlucky racoon had gotten itself trapped until the sound of splintering wood echoed out, stunning her.

She held her breath when she heard distinctly human coughing and wheezing. A voice grumbled quietly, incomprehensible through the door, followed by the tap, tap, tap of someone climbing the basement stairs. She scurried beneath the kitchen table and hoped that the tablecloth and the darkness would be enough to stay unnoticed.

The door swung open in near-silence and a bulky figure stepped into the kitchen. He was stout of body, less like a weightlifter and more like an aging football coach, and had a great bulging sack slung over one shoulder. His coat, cap and pants were a bold red with a wooly white trim; at least, wherever they weren’t smudged black with coal. His round, weathered face, wire-frame spectacles and bushy white beard were similarly streaked and matted in places, but if the filth upset him, it didn’t affect his jolly little smile.

That cinched it for her. This had to be Santa Claus himself.

He didn’t seem to notice her, instead meandering through the kitchen until he found the way to the living room, which he began to scrutinize. “No lights, no tree, no stockings, no milk.” His voice was gruff and coarse, tinged with a bitterness that utterly clashed with his expression. “Not a single fucking cookie. Does this kid really think I’m just gonna give away a cell phone for nothing?”

Taylor’s heart sank. He’d come all this way, broken into their home, scared her half to death, and he wasn’t even going to give her a present.

Something seemed to catch his attention. He set the sack down and wandered around living room, sniffing the air. She almost thought he’d picked up on her scent or something, but instead he approached the corner where the TV was set up. He started digging through the media stand, looking for something.

In his absence, the sack had begun to droop on one side, falling open just enough to give her a peek. It was filled to the brim with all kinds of stuff - LEGO sets, shiny new shoes, portable CD players, animal plushes - and there, right at the lip of the sack, sat a brand-new cell phone with a protective case and a foldout keyboard.

She goggled at the treasure, then looked back to Santa.

He had dug a wrapped box out of its hiding spot behind old VHS stacks. He held it up, but instead of shaking it or weighing it in his hands, he simply closed his eyes in concentration. “Hmm… Second-hand… yard sale?”

Quiet as she could, she slipped out from her hiding spot and crept into the living room. Slowly, steadily, she crouched down in front of the bag. She hesitated, trying to remember if anyone at school had said something about Santa booby-trapping his stuff.

“SNES, with… two games. A decade and a half old, that’s just sad.”

Mostly certain there were no tripwires or pressure sensors in a cloth sack, she reached down and delicately picked up the phone.

Santa spoke up, louder than before. “Someone just landed herself a spot on the naughty list.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She turned on her heel and tried to run to the stairs, but before she got more than a few steps away, impossibly long sheets of festive wrapping paper shot out from the bag and coiled around her wrists and ankles, arresting her momentum and forcing her to drop the phone.

“Haven’t you heard the song, little girl?” Suddenly, in a burst of acrid coal dust, Santa appeared before her, eyes as blue and cold as ice. “I know when you’re awake.”

She fought against her restraints, but for each piece of wrapping paper she tore free from, two more wound around her forearms and shins. “I’m sorry,” she babbled, her voice small. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I won’t do it again please I won’t I promise please!”

He leaned forward, looming over her. This close, she could see that his jolly smile was nothing more than an illusion created by the shape of his beard; the thin frown beneath offered nothing but contempt. “You don’t deserve a cell phone, you know. If you did, you’d be able to afford one without resorting to petty theft.” He spat the words out like they were bitter and rotten.

“I’m- mmph!” More wrapping paper found her face and smothered the lower half, muting her words and filling her nostrils with the stench of processing chemicals and ink. The paper on her limbs started to tug her backwards, and it was all she could do to stay standing. “Mm hmph! Hmmm!”

“Lucky for you, I’m a very generous man.” He straightened, looking down at her through his spectacles. “I can give you everything you want. Every toy and trinket your sick little heart desires.”

A distant clamor reached Taylor’s ears, of clanging and whirring and miserable moans, growing more and more distinct as it seemed to get nearer. Even turning her head was a struggle now, but she put up enough of a fight to crane her neck around and peer into the sack behind her.

Past the paper tendrils dragging her closer, beyond the scattered presents and candies, deeper even than the bag should have been, there was an opening, not to the other side of the living room but to a whole different place. The image seemed to shift and swirl, but she caught glimpses of great big machines and towering shelves full of products, of winding conveyor belts and narrow workstations. There were people, too, of all ages and sizes; some very old, others just a few years older than her, each one with weathered hands and lifeless expressions.

“Once you’ve earned it, that is.”

In her moment of shock the bindings had gained ground, dragging her back towards the bag’s opening. A terrible thought struck her, staring into the industrial nightmare, that if she let herself be pulled in, she might never see Emma or her dad ever again. Desperate, her eyes darted around the room, looking for any way out. The phone, the VHS tapes, her present, the scissors-

Adrenaline rushed through her body as she threw herself sideways towards the coffee table. Half the tendrils tore from the added tension, giving her just enough leeway to reach up and snag the handle of the scissors. She cut the rest off with reckless hurry, slashing gouges in her coat sleeves and pajama legs in the process. Once she was all but free, she scrambled to her feet, used her other hand to rip away the sheet that covered her mouth, and made a break for the stairs.

With another burst of black dust, Santa appeared on the threshold of the front hall, arms out like a goalie, blocking her path. She tried to dash past him, but to no avail. A thick, coal-smeared hand snagged her by the bicep, nearly yanking it out of its socket. She yelped in pain.

“Just for that,” he growled, “you get to work the coal mines for a year or three. Better hope you’ve got strong lungs, you little monster.”

Gripping the scissors the way she’d always been told not to grip them, she swung them in an arc and sunk one of the blades deep into Santa’s thigh. He roared in pain and let her go, and she bolted to the landing, holding scissors slick with blood, taking the steps two at a time.

She skidded to a stop in front of Dad’s door, knocking and knocking and knocking. “Dad!” she shouted, so loud her voice threatened to break. “Dad, wake up, wake up!” She pressed her ear to the door, but the only thing she heard over Santa’s continuous swearing downstairs was her dad’s snoring. Her fists pounded in unison this time, rattling the door in its hinges with each thunk, thunk, thunk. This time, when she stopped to listen, there was a response.

“...Taylor?”

Hope buoyed in her chest, and she got up on her toes to say, “Dad! Please, open up, I need you to come out here, it’s serious!”

“Honey, if this is about the present again, just go back to sleep, okay?”

Just as fast as it had risen, her hope faltered. “What? No! No, no, it’s not the present, it’s, it’s-”

The stench of coal reached her before Santa could. She flinched away from his grasp and stumbled back from the stairwell and Dad’s door. Santa staggered forward, bag slung over his shoulder, pant leg stained a deeper, darker red, filthy face split in a furious rictus.

With nowhere else to go, she ran down the hall and into her room. When she reached the window she stopped and whirled around, holding the scissors up with both hands, trying to look as threatening as possible.

Santa appeared in front of her, his dust dirtying the floor. “No more bullshit,” he snarled, throwing his sack to the floor. “Get in, right now, and I might consider letting you spend the rest of your days working assembly lines instead of breaking your back in the mines.”

She held her weapon up higher. “No!”

“What are you gonna do with that, huh? Kill me?” He grinned a nasty grin, eyes glinting in the moonlight. “You can’t kill the spirit of giving, kid. There’s forces at work that are bigger than you, me, or any of the poor fuckers stuck in the factories, and they’ve got rules for dealing with people who try and throw a wrench in the natural order. You’ll only regret trying.”

When she made to respond he took a surprise swipe at her hands. She shrieked and jerked them away just in time. Her retaliatory swipes warded away his next attempt, but the third connected and sent the bloody scissors flying across the room.

Taylor brought her aching hand to her chest, panting and terrified.

Santa stared down at the scissors, then at her. His grin widened and he began to advance.

“Taylor, move!”

She hurled herself to one side just in time to watch Dad charge into her room and ram his shoulder into Santa’s back, sending him through the window with an earsplitting crash.

For a long, tense moment, she and her dad just stood there, breathing heavily, unable to look away from the window. With all but a few jagged shards of glass gone, the moonlight glowed a little brighter, created more contrast between the lit section of the floor and the dark of the rest. Snowflakes drifted inside and melted on the floorboards.

The burst of coal dust never came.

Taylor rushed to the sill, trying to peer down without getting too close to the sharp edges. She got a good enough angle to see Santa face down in the snow below, his neck bent at a very wrong angle, before her dad pulled her back out of the light. “Don’t look,” he managed.

Suddenly, she wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his t-shirt, careless of the second-hand coal she was smearing on it. Her body began to shake as the adrenaline slowly drained from her system. “I’ll never leave,” she croaked. “I swear I won’t, never ever. I wanna stay here with you, with you, with you.”

“Was that… who I think it was?”

Soreness had begun to creep into her whole body, and soon her grip on Dad was the only thing keeping her upright. “I don’t need a phone, or makeup or a Gamecube or anything, I won’t ask for any more presents, I-”

“Presents…?”

Something in his voice gave her pause, and she tipped her head back to find him looking strangely at the sack of gifts. A few flakes had gotten caught in his stubble, flecking it with white. “Dad?”

“The children,” he murmured, a faraway look in his eyes. Without warning he dislodged her, nearly knocking her to the ground in the process, and began to gather the end of the bag in his hands. “Someone has to deliver their presents.”

“W-what?” She tugged on his sleeve, trying to make him let go. The cold seeping into the room made her teeth chatter. “Dad, stop, you’re s-scaring me!” He slung the bag over his shoulder and straightened up, and this time when he turned around Taylor fell down backwards, mouth hanging open.

The white in his stubble wasn’t snow. White-grey hairs were replacing the dark bristles, spreading across his jaw like weeds. Wrinkles were slowly appearing on his face, crow’s feet and laugh lines and awful new creases in his brow. His eyes wandered around the room, at once his and not-his, until they landed on her.

She propped herself up on her hands, unable to look away, even as she shook her head. “Oh,” she whimpered. “Oh, no.”

He sighed and knelt down before her, smiling with a warmth she’d not seen from him since last year. His hand reached out to cup her cheek. “I know it’s hard, sweetheart, but Daddy has to go to work now.”

“Please don’t, please stay.”

“Shh, shh shh.” He wiped a tear away with his callused thumb. “It’s not as hard as it seems, I promise. I’ll be able to bring you anything you want, and you’ll still get to see me once a year.”

“But I want you here, all year long, with me, with  _ me! _ ”

He gave her a kiss on the forehead, his stubble now more white than not and long enough to call a beard, then stepped away, into the light, still smiling down at her. One finger tapped the side of his nose, and he winked. “Leave some milk and cookies out for your old man, won’t you, Taylor?”

Before she could protest, his body began to dissolve into snowflakes, quickly drifting out the window with a light flurry, and in the span of a breath he was gone. In his place, sitting on the floor where he’d just stood, was a brand-new, top-of-the-line cell phone.

Numbing cold and disbelief kept her from simply breaking down; she held onto that. Slowly, she crawled over to the phone and picked it up. It took her a minute to figure out how to use it, then another to confirm it had service. She dialed the only number she had memorized and managed to raise it to her ear. It rang for what felt like hours.

Finally, it stopped, and a sleep-heavy voice muttered, “Whozis?”

Struggling to string together a full sentence, she stammered, “I- me, it’s me, I need- can I come over?”

“Taylor? ...Yeah, yeah of course.” Emma’s voice was so soft with concern it made her curl in on herself. “You know you can come by whenever you want, right? Mom and Dad said so. You didn’t have to call.”

Taylor began to sob.


End file.
